Ruinous War in the Horn of Africa

Published: May 16, 2000

After nearly a yearlong lull in fighting, two of the world's poorest countries, Eritrea and Ethiopia, are at war again. It is hard to think of a more pointless and wasteful international conflict.

The causes of the war resist rational explication. It is ostensibly a border dispute, with both sides claiming sovereignty over a remote 620-mile frontier that was never clearly delineated when Eritrea seceded from Ethiopia in 1993. But that dispute has inflamed deeper issues of mistrust and nationalistic passions that have ruptured what was once an uneasy alliance between two guerrilla armies that fought side by side in Ethiopia to bring down the dictatorship of Mengistu Haile Mariam.

In the two years since fighting erupted in May 1998, casualty estimates have ranged from a conservative 20,000 to as high as 70,000. Tens of thousands of Eritreans have been forcibly deported from their homes in Ethiopia. Some 270,000 people have been displaced by the fighting. The war compounds the danger of a looming famine in southeast Ethiopia, where a drought has put eight million people at risk of starvation. Scarce resources and manpower that are urgently needed to avert mass starvation are instead being diverted to the front.

The leaders of the two countries, Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea and Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, bear responsibility for perpetuating the war. They are both able men and erstwhile allies who were once embraced by Washington as exemplars of a new generation of promising African leaders. But they have been obstinate in defense of their own narrow agendas and heedless of the suffering the war has caused. Mr. Meles began this latest offensive, just two days after a United Nations Security Council team failed to bridge minute differences in a proposed peace accord.

Negotiations over that accord still represent the best hope for peace. Yesterday the Security Council discussed an American proposal to impose a long overdue arms embargo on both countries. That may be difficult to clear with Russia and China, both of which are profiting from arms sales to the impoverished antagonists. But Washington should pursue this and other pressures that will make clear to the two leaders that international legitimacy and development assistance depend on good-faith negotiations and a cessation of military adventures.